Prayer’s Difficulty is Me
God is not slow to act as it appears to us. He needs no information or persuasion to give us His best. It is we who do not trust in Their goodness and faithfulness, and this is where the difficulty with prayer lies for us. Wanting what we think we need or want, now, when we ask.
Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun. Romans 8:28-30 MSG
Determinism
“How could He be Father, if in creating, He did not make provision for the babbling prayers of His children?”
We, it seems, have been conditioned by religious thought to see God as the micromanager of the universe and to have a deterministic view of the details of our lives. “It was not God’s will.” “It was not in His plan.” or “They were not the right person for me.” etc. It is one thing to say God knows the end from the beginning, but quite another to say He is in control of every detail in between. This view of sovereignty, the use of power and rule as our default relationship to God is unacceptable to Him and should be to us! No wonder we struggle so with God when we think this way about Him! No wonder we cannot pray!
Isaiah says of God that He is, “Declaring the end and the result from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure and purpose.”(Isaiah 46:10 AMPC) Are His pleasures and purposes a location or a condition of being? Paul says in Romans 8:29, “…He also predestined (us) to become conformed to the image of His Son.” Predestination is not the pre-determination of heaven or hell for us, whatever that may be, but of the character and nature of God, which we are destined to become and express! As MacDonald would say, “…that, we would be like Him.” He, as usual, avoids the ditches and finds a balance. The option that the Father makes “provision for the babbling prayers of His children!”
Life happens in the ordinary decisions we make in our lives with God being alongside us, participating with us in life. There was never a plan “A” for the every-day details of our lives! So, a plan “B” was never needed!
Prayer’s Difficulty is an introductory reflection on the Unspoken Sermon linked below: